The movie is based on Donald Westlake's (Writing under the Pseudonym Richard Stark) classic crime suspense novel SLAYGROUND, featuring the sociopath profession criminal, Parker, from a series of books with that same character. The director of the movie apparently decided he didn't like the books or their main character. In this stupid and clichéd thriller, he uses neither. More or less, the director or producer, whoever made this inept decision, simply took the title of the novel and cooked up a script bearing no relation to the book or any in the series, in order to suite what they believed would be something better. If you're looking for the Parker from the Richard Stark PARKER novels, forget about it. He's been replaced by a small time hood who spews out lines like, "I'm a thief, not a killer." "I'm afraid." "I've never killed anybody." I'm sure if you're a fan of those novels you don't need to hear anymore. I've saved you from wasting your money on this abysmal take on SLAYGROUND. It's a shame, too, because the book would have made a classic movie, but they chose to film something else.

I am one of the few,proud and lucky folks that was able to see this great film on opening weekend.Sadly that theater in Cedar Knolls,NJ is no longer standing.This is a film that I read both negative and positive comments on but mine are all of a complimenting nature.First off,the cast is perfect and I would not have made any changes.peter Coyote was a very sympathetic character as Stone.One problem this film had to overcome is people most likely thought this was going to be a horror movie rather than a most interesting crime thriller and my favorite in this genre.I also was thrilled to see familiar locations from when my father,brother and I used to travel Route 9W through West Haverstraw on the way to New Jersey.A few of these places are the Hi-Tor bowling alley,Shop with the Bix Furniture Stripping and some various highway locales.I only wish that I knew where more of the scenes were filmed and would be able to stand where scenes were filmed.To me this is the holy grail film and never get tired of watching it.Sadly,this seldom is on cable or regular TV,only indie channels may show it from time to time.If you are a fan of crime drama/thrillers,do yourself a favor and give this one a chance and see what you think.They are fairly inexpensive on DVD on merchant websites.In closing,I wish every one who had anything to do with this film the very best of wishes and thank you for giving the world such a superb film.

its pretty obvious that before you even watch this, just by looking at the cast of the film at IMDb, that this is not an A class film. The budget was pretty small to say the least but more frustrating was it seemed that the film was just missing a lot of parts that could have helped out the watch-ability of it.The first part right off was the mysterious guy who comes after the three robbers to kill em all for the bad thing they did (kill a little girl by accident). They give you no indication at how he figures out who killed the girl and how he always finds where everyone's at so he can go kill all the perpetrators. The villain is no mystic and can't see the future so it's like, "how does he know who did it?" They could have added 15 to 20 minutes of filler to this film and it would have helped quite a bit on my rating of it but to make us believe this assassin/hit-man appears in all these places with no way of knowing at how he finds the guys is just a "gimme a break" type of deal. The bummer is at the end where our "parker"esque actor (Peter Coyote) kills the villain, like you'd expect, it's no-one we know throughout the film. It's just a weird guy.In the middle of the film the Peter Coyote character is sprayed with bullets from a machine in the back and he's placed in the hospital. A few scenes after he escapes the hospital and you see the scar he has on his back, it's the entire length of his spine. My first thought was "geez, this guy is superman". There's no way on this earth anyone could have gotten up a few days after this and just walked away.I'm a huge fan of the Parker series but this was a total let down. This one begs to be remade but I can't see that happening. For better Parker goodness, try Point Blank or Payback or The Outfit. You'll be well rewarded.

Starting in New York and ending in Blackpool, SLAYGROUND is an unusual crime thriller which was quite a flop when first released (it was one of the few films Thorn EMI not only distributed but produced also) and was never seen by that many people. Based on one of the "Parker" novels written by Richard Stark (POINT BLANK and PAYBACK were also based on this series), SLAYGROUND stars Peter Coyote, British comedian Mel Smith (from Smith and Jones), in a rare dramatic role, and Billie Whitelaw. If you like tough crime thrillers, track it down.